- Hollywood director Danny Boyle chooses Shakespeare theme for £81m opening spectacular
- 27-ton bell inspired by Shakespeare will form the centrepiece of £27m opening ceremony
- Hundreds of NHS nurses and schoolchildren will be involved in event
- 20,000 performers will take part in Olympic and Paralympic opening and closing ceremonies
By Emily Andrews
Last updated at 1:43 AM on 28th January 2012
The opening ceremony of the Olympic Games will feature a performance by hundreds of nurses, it was revealed yesterday.
Artistic director Danny Boyle – the Oscar-winning director behind Slumdog Millionaire – said he wanted to celebrate everything that was ‘unique and special’ to the British Isles…including the National Health Service.
Europe’s biggest bell will be specially made to ring in the start of London 2012.
Our turn next: Mark Foster of the Great Britain Olympic men’s swim team carries his country’s flag to lead out the delegation during the Opening Ceremony for the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics
The 27-ton bell will be a feat of engineering and twice the weight of Big Ben.
Mr Boyle said the ceremony will be called ‘Isles of Wonders’ after a speech in Shakespeare’s play The Tempest.
More than anything, he said, he wanted it to be a ‘people’s Games’ and to try to capture the very particular, and sometimes peculiar, British sense of humour.
A sense of humour that has, at times, been tested by the spiralling budget for the Olympic ceremonies – last month it doubled to £81million.
At the vast rehearsal studios in East London Mr Boyle gave a small glimpse of what 80,000 spectators and millions of TV viewers can expect on July 27.
The biggest ringing bell in Europe has been commissioned and will hang at one end of the stadium.
It will ‘ring in’ the start of the Games and will be inscribed with Caliban’s line from The Tempest ‘Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises’.
Shakespeare, NHS and schoolchildren will be at the centre of the Olympic Opening Ceremony display, Danny Boyle, pictured, revealed today
The half-man, half-monster Caliban is devoted to the island on which he lives – and Mr Boyle hopes to mirror that pride and patriotism in the ceremony.
Indeed he seemed to be rather keen on monsters – he said that last year’s production of Frankenstein at the National Theatre had allowed him to practise lots of ideas.
So perhaps we’ll see lots of prosthetics, green paint and pantomime costumes alongside runners from Kenya and gymnasts from Russia.
Another theme will be the cleansing and recovery of poisoned land – after the Olympic park site was cleaned of all its industrial pollutants.
Greatest show on earth: The spectacular Opening Ceremony in Beijing in the Bird’s Nest Stadium four years ago
One certainty is that there’ll be lots of flying – and flowers. A flying system that can lift 25 tons, the equivalent of five elephants, has been installed in the main stadium to enable some impressive aerial acrobatics.
‘EMPLOYERS UNPREPARED FOR GAMES ABSENCES’
Most employers have not drawn up plans for dealing with an expected surge in staff absence during the Olympics, months before the Games start, according to a report today.
A survey of 1,000 office workers by recruitment consultants Badenoch & Clark showed that two-thirds were employed in companies yet to draft a plan.
Among those who have agreed procedures in place, some said annual leave will be given on a first-come, first-served basis, while a small percentage have told staff they will not be allowed to take a break while the Games are held.
Employers in London are among those most likely not to have told their staff about holiday plans when the sporting event is held in the capital.
Nicola Linkleter, managing director at Badenoch & Clark, said: ‘Given the immense interest the London Olympic Games will create among workers, this is poor planning that could lead to employee discontent, confusion or threadbare cover.’
And Sebastian Coe, chairman of London 2012, dropped another hint by saying whenever he popped down to see rehearsals he kept tripping over buckets of flowers.
So it will be noisy, acrobatic, colourful and floral. What else?
Well, the only other confirmed part was that nurses will have a starring role in one ‘sequence’ as the NHS is one of the things that is ‘unique about us…along with our sense of humour’.
Featuring with them will be some 900 children from the six Olympic host boroughs who have been auditioning in recent weeks.
No details of performers were revealed – but again a hint that ‘everyone’ wants to take part. But we can expect the spectacular. And the unexpected.
Asked if the fear of technology going wrong had ensured they play safe, executive producer Stephen Daldry implied they would be pushing boundaries. He said: ‘The idea of jeopardy is one of the great fantastic tensions of the evening.’
Mr Boyle said only about a third of the budget would be spent on the opening ceremony, which was much less than the £65million the Chinese spent at Beijing 2008.
He said: ‘You are standing on the shoulders of giants when you do this kind of job. You cannot but live in the shadow of your predecessors.
Countdown: Sebastian Coe, Boris Johnson and David Cameron discuss the six-month countdown to the Olympic games in Davos yesterday
‘The spectacle of Beijing was just breathtaking. The sheer beauty of Athens is very inspiring but I have to say that Sydney has inspired us. It got the feel of a people’s Games right.
‘It is inevitable that people will compare us – and that is fine.
‘I think there is a sea change and we are lucky enough to be setting it. It will be spectacular but the reduction in scale is inevitable.’
London 2012 said it will release more details of the opening in the run-up to the Games to give people a flavour of what to expect.
Mr Boyle said he would have preferred to keep everything a ‘surprise’ but that was impossible when everyone ‘films everything on their mobiles’.
Estimates suggest the advertising spend during the ceremony, which will last three hours, could be worth £2billion globally.
‘LIKE 165 WEST END SHOWS AT THE SAME TIME’: FINAL PREPARATIONS FOR OLYMPIC OPENING AND CLOSING CEREMONIES
Staging the four showpiece opening and closing ceremonies for the London 2012 Games is ‘challenging, daunting but also incredibly exciting’, executive producer Stephen Daldry said today.
He described it as like putting on 165 West End shows at the same time.
Nurses, the biggest ringing bell in Europe inscribed with lines from Shakespeare, and children will be key features of the opening ceremony.
Here are some of the facts, figures and details behind the ceremonies.
For the Opening Ceremony there is:
- 15,000 square metres of staging – equivalent to 12 Olympic-sized swimming pools.
- A flying system that can lift 25 tonnes – that is the same as five elephants.
- There will be 12,956 props, which is more than 100 times more than used in a West End musical.
- A million-watt PA system using more than 500 speakers and 50 tonnes of associated sound gear – which is double the amount of speakers than on the main stage at Glastonbury.
- The design team have made enough scale model pieces to cover a 100m running track. Every performer has been represented by a plastic figurine.
- So far, 64 different supplier companies have been contracted to provide services and products.
- For all four opening and closing ceremonies there will be 25 containers full of scenery and props and 75 containers of costumes full of 23,000 costumes. Some cast members will wear more than one costume each.
- 15,000 volunteer cast across all four ceremonies. The people who have auditioned have been aged from 18 to 90 years old. They have come from across the UK and include people who watched the 1948 Games live, according to London 2012.
- A total of 12 hours of music working with an internationally renowned orchestra of around 60 musicians is part of the programme. Organisers will spend three months of recording time in the studio and spend 36 hours in dedicated drum tuition.
- The combined TV audiences for the four ceremonies is predicted to be more than four billion people. Sir Martin Sorrell has predicted that the equivalent airtime value of the four ceremonies will be worth between approximately £2bn and £5bn.
News | Mail Online
- Kajus Scuka, 48, jailed for life today with a minimum term of 12 years
- Rapist slipped into Britain undetected and signed on for benefits
- He stabbed wife three times in row over his infidelity and was jailed for life in 1988
- Also convicted of gross indecency, indecent assault and attacking a woman with an axe in his homeland
By Rob Cooper
Last updated at 6:40 PM on 27th January 2012
A dangerous sexual predator from the Czech Republic who murdered his wife at home came to the UK and carried out a knifepoint rape and three serious sex attacks on women, a court heard.
Kajus Scuka, 48, raped a woman on her 54th birthday as she walked her dog in a park and groped his other victims and offered them cash for sex.
The convicted killer was claiming £67-per-week in benefits after coming to the country in 2009.
A judge today expressed dismay that despite his serious convictions and lengthy sentence, Scuka was ‘free to enjoy the same freedom of movement as any other European citizen.’
Jailed: Kajus Scuka, 48, who had served 11-and-a-half years of a 13 year sentence in his homeland
He was allowed into the country despite serving 11-and-a-half years of a 13 year sentence for murdering his wife.
He had been jailed in 1988 for stabbing her three times in his homeland when they argued over his infidelity.
Scuka also has convictions in the Czech Republic for gross indecency, indecent assault and assaulting a woman with an axe for which he was jailed for three-and-a-half years.
Although he was already a convicted killer, as he was not deemed high profile enough he is likely to have slipped into the country unnoticed because border officials would not have known of his criminal past.
Judge Peter Kelson told the defendant: ‘It seems to me that even with your convictions for murder and assaults you were free to enjoy the same freedom of movement as any other European citizen’
Any EU citizen is entitled to come into the country unless border officials can show that the individual represents a danger under free movement of labour laws.
The system is reliant on criminal records databases being shared – and a conviction alone is not enough to keep someone out.
The Sheffield attacks all happened within a two-mile radius of the city’s giant Meadowhall Shopping Centre between March 2010 and May 2011 and – police did not even know the killer was in the country.
Jailing Scuka for life with a minimum term of 12 years at Sheffield Crown Court, Judge Peter Kelson told him: ‘I regard you as a very, very dangerous man.’
He said he was ‘unwilling to control his sexual urges and was a grave danger to women’ and he would be recommending Scuka for deportation after he has served his sentence.
The judge said: ‘If there is ever such a day you are released in this country you should be deported. I have no doubt that the public will be terribly alarmed.
‘It seems to me that even with your convictions for murder and assaults you were free to enjoy the same freedom of movement as any other European citizen.’
After the hearing, Detective Sergeant Ian Harding said it was worrying that Scuka could slip into Britain under the radar.
‘It is a concern that people of this nature move freely about the EU without any restriction,’ he said.
‘This man has been living in Sheffield since 2009 and we were not even aware of his presence.’
Scuka first struck in March, 2010 as a 51-year-old grandmother walked her two-year-old granddaughter home in a pram at Sheffield Lane Top.
WHY ARE WE NOT WARNED ABOUT EU CRIMINALS?
Britain’s ‘open borders’ agreement with the European Union means millions of people with criminal records can get into the country unchecked.
Any citizen of an EU country, including the 8 countries of Eastern Europe, can get into the UK without a visa, just as Britons can travel freely around the continent.
When EU nationals arrive at the border, their passport details are checked against a ‘watch list’ of serious criminals and terror suspects compiled by the UK Border Agency.
But the database contains giant holes – as the British authorities are reliant on other countries to share their criminal records.
Unless an offender is high profile, is known to have committed crimes in several countries, or is on the Interpol wanted list – the system is unlikely to be aware of their previous convictions.
And even if a new arrival does have a conviction – or indeed several – and the authorities are aware of them, they cannot automatically be refused entry.
European free movement rules mean they can be barred to ‘maintain public security’ but convictions in themselves do not necessarily mean they will be turned away.
Even more worrying is that many foreign nationals do not undergo rigorous background checks even after they have been arrested.
Each year around 30,000 pass through the criminal justice system without police exploring the full extent of their criminal pasts.
By comparison, criminals from outside the EU who want to come to Britain must obtain a visa before entering – and are required to declare any previous convictions.
He approached the woman from behind and put his hand between her legs while making ‘sexual grunting noises’, said prosecutor Mike Smith.
His victim turned round and swore at Scuka who fled.
The second attack happened on April 14 when a 23-year-old was approached by Scuka who pretended to be jogging as she walked alongside the River Don.
His victim said he appeared to be wanting directions but he then grabbed her and tried to push her into nearby undergrowth and said: ‘I give you 30 quid.’
The woman, who escaped, told the court: ‘At first I thought he was going to mug me but then I realised he wasn’t after money.’
Two hours later Scuka raped his third victim as she walked her dog on playing fields after work just a mile away at Wincobank.
The victim told the court a man speaking broken English asked her for directions then knocked her into a ditch.
He slapped her hard on her thighs before taking out a penknife and raping her.
She said: ‘He tried to kiss me. He kept slapping me. At one point I was thinking I didn’t want to die in this ditch, I didn’t want to die with my clothes off and be found by children.’
The final attack was on May 17, 2011 when a student in her 20s was walking through a park in Firth Park.
Scuka grabbed her from behind and said ‘let’s have sex’ but she managed to break free and escape as he tried to rip off her coat.
He was arrested minutes later at his home half a mile away.
Scuka’s DNA was found on the rape victim while fibres from a hooded top he wore for the last attack were found on his victim’s coat.
Scuka, who spoke through an interpreter in court, was convicted by a jury of one offence of rape and three offences of sexual assault.
He told the court he lost his footing as he spoke to the rape victim and they both fell to the ground on a public footpath.
Scuka claimed the woman touched him sexually first and he found her attractive but did nothing against her will.
Police believed he returned home for brief periods by bus during his time in Sheffield. Det Sgt Harding said: ‘He claimed he came here looking for work but he hasn’t done any and just signed on.’
News | Mail Online
By Michael Seamark and Nick Mcdermott
Last updated at 10:04 PM on 27th January 2012
The notoriously thin-skinned Stephen Hester remains annoyed whenever any newspaper prints the much-published photograph of him astride a horse dressed in full hunting regalia
First his annual bonus is cut to just under £1million. Now it seems that Stephen Hester’s still far from insignificant fortune has taken another hit.
The beleaguered Royal Bank of Scotland boss separated from his Canadian-born wife Barbara in 2010.
Mr Hester’s name has now disappeared from Land Registry documents listing ownership of their magnificent £8.6million marital home.
The couple, married almost 20 years with two children, purchased the five-bedroom, four-bathroom mansion in one of the capital’s most exclusive areas in 1995 for £1.78million.
Publicly available documents last year listed the pair as joint owners of the mortgage-free West London home, with neighbours including Simon Cowell and Sir Richard Branson.
But now the property is registered with Barbara Abt, the maiden name of the banker’s estranged wife, as sole owner.
The RBS boss – linked to attractive divorcee Suzy Neubert four months after his marriage break-up – is apparently renting a £3.8million apartment near his family.
But while Mr Hester may have ‘lost’ the London home, he can fall back on his vast country pile in Oxfordshire, a 350-acre estate complete with eight gardeners. And there is always the ski chalet in Verbier.
The Oxford-educated banker met his estranged wife Barbara when both were working at Credit Suisse.
They married in 1991. The couple divided their time between London and Oxfordshire and shared a love of fox-hunting – she is a master of foxhounds for the Warwickshire Hunt.
Shortly after taking over the helm at state-owned RBS in 2008, Mr Hester faced immediate criticism over his indulgent lifestyle after hosting a lavish hunt ball at his £7million country estate.
And the notoriously thin-skinned Mr Hester remains annoyed whenever any newspaper prints the much-published photograph of him astride a horse dressed in full hunting regalia.
Despite their shared country interests, the Hesters parted in the summer of 2010.
One family source said at the time: ‘It’s terribly sad. They’re working on an amicable separation for the sake of their children and Stephen is getting on with his job.’
Later that year, the RBS boss, 51, appeared arm-in-arm with mother-of-two Miss Neubert, like his wife a former banker.
She works in the City, as head of sales and marketing for private bank J O Hambro, which handles the funds of hugely wealthy individuals.
Stephen Hester separated from his Canadian-born wife Barbara (left) in 2010. His name has now disappeared from Land Registry documents listing ownership of their £8.6m home. He was linked to attractive divorcee Suzy Neubert (right) four months after his marriage break-up
She was married to Jolyon Neubert, the barrister son of Tory MP Sir Michael Neubert, with whom she had two daughters.
Yorkshireman Mr Hester has had a glittering, and financially rewarding, career, starting at Credit Suisse, then Abbey National and property company British Land.
According to one City insider: ‘He’s very proud of his achievements but he doesn’t take kindly to criticism.’
In an interview in 2009, Mr Hester said his upbringing and work in a sweet factory had taught him the value of money.
‘My first job was packing Polos in a factory so I don’t need anyone to tell me what it’s like being a normal person on normal amounts of money,’ he said.
Weeks after he took over at RBS, recruited to end the culture of excess, details emerged of his magnificent country estate, which has one of the most spectacular gardens in Britain.
The gardeners are paid salaries of up to £20,000 to tend it throughout the year.
Part of it was designed and created by celebrity landscape architect Tom Stuart-Smith, who has worked for Karl Lagerfeld and billionaire philanthropist John Paul Getty.
The grounds include an 80-acre arboretum, parterre, sunken garden and water meadow.
It emerged last night that while Mr Hester may have agreed to limit his bonus to £963,000 this year, he could still earn more than £7million for a year’s work.
In addition to a basic salary worth £1.2million, he will be handed a pension contribution worth £420,000 and the bonus of 3.6million shares in the bank now worth £998,000.
He could also be awarded ‘long-term incentive plan’ shares worth four times his basic salary, adding another £4.8million to his award for 2011.
The multiple layers of executive reward mean Mr Hester could end up earning just over £7.4million.
However, the poor performance of RBS – which has lost 40 per cent of its value this year – means he is unlikely to scoop the maximum available under the long-term incentive plan.
News | Mail Online
Categories:
News Tags:
£4m, £8m, apartment, chief, exwife, Gave, Hester, Home, keeps, mansion, rents, Stephen
By Emma Reynolds
Last updated at 9:06 PM on 27th January 2012
When Star Trek obsessive Tony Alleyne was separated from his wife, he embraced the chance to turn their old flat into a recreation of the inside of the Starship Enterprise.
But the 58-year-old’s painstaking efforts may have been for nothing.
His ex-wife wants to sell up – and she intends to offer buyers a more conventional looking home.
It’s a flat Jim, but not as we know it: Tony Alleyne in his home with his full-scale replica of the transporter console featured in Star Trek
Star Trek fan Tony Alleyne tucks into Earthly toast in his one-bedroom studio flat
Mr Alleyne has spent the last ten years transforming the one-bedroom property into a sci-fi fantasy, with a computerised flight deck, flashing lights and even ‘transporters’.
He is devastated by the news that his ex-wife Georgina wants to sell the flat in Hinckley, Leicestershire, where he has been living by himself since their break-up.
‘Trekkie’ Mr Alleyne said it would cost at least £100,000 rebuild the interior elsewhere, according to The Sun.
He said: ‘To say I’m gutted is an understatement. It is my life’s work — and it looks like it’s going into a skip. I admit there were tears.’
Mrs Alleyne, 52 — who has paid the mortgage since they split in 1994 — said: ‘I want to sell it as conventional property.’
Her former husband started building the amazingly accurate spaceship replica after his friend gave him a magazine based on the TV show.
He told the Daily Mail: ‘My friend gave me a Star Trek mag and I became obsessed with having my own space ship. He laughed when I told him – I think he thought it was all a joke, but I knew I was going to achieve it one day.
‘It all started as therapy after we split up,’ he said. ‘Building every bit from scratch really helped me to deal with the stress of it all.’
Step into my spaceship: The stunning level of detail he has put into transforming his home
Initially Mr Alleyne decked the flat out in cream and metallic colours as the USS Enterprise from 1979′s Star Trek: The Motion Picture. But he found that ‘a bit boring’ and has now upgraded by recreating the starship Voyager from the 1990s series of the same name.
A copy of the ship’s command console controls the lights and sound effects in the apartment in Hinckley, Leicestershire.
Every morning, a voice-activated computer system turns on fluorescent tubes that illuminate bleeping panels and a replica of the ‘beam me up’ transporter – all reflected in the mirrored ceiling. The windows have been fitted with layers of perspex and wood so that they appear to look out on outer space.
There’s a whole universe going on in that flat. Tony Alleyne’s home
Boldly going: Mr Alleyne said he was devastated at having to leave his homemade spaceship console behind
Even the doorbell has been customised. It plays a sample of Patrick Stewart in his role as captain Jean-Luc Picard.
Sourcing and building everything himself has cost Mr Alleyne around £4,000, but he said it would have cost hundreds of thousands of pounds for labourers to do it.
He said: ‘Building this has been like a dream. I had a vision and I’m really amazed at what I managed to achieve with just hard work.’
He added: ‘Some people might think I’m a bit of a sad individual, but I’m not. I’m just really into Star Trek – it’s my only vice.’
Remote retreat: The 58-year-old has spent ten years on the creation that he believes would costs hundreds of thousands to have built from scratch
News | Mail Online
Categories:
News Tags:
Alleyne, divorce, exwife, Flat, Loses, painstakingly, recreated, Star, Tony, Trek, Trekkie
By Emma Reynolds
Last updated at 6:10 PM on 27th January 2012
When Star Trek obsessive Tony Alleyne was separated from his wife, he embraced the chance to turn their old flat into a recreation of the inside of the Starship Enterprise.
But the 58-year-old’s painstaking efforts may have been for nothing.
His ex-wife wants to sell up – and she intends to offer buyers a more conventional looking home.
It’s a flat Jim, but not as we know it: Tony Alleyne in his home with his full-scale replica of the transporter console featured in Star Trek
Star Trek fan Tony Alleyne tucks into Earthly toast in his one-bedroom studio flat
Mr Alleyne has spent the last ten years transforming the one-bedroom property into a sci-fi fantasy, with a computerised flight deck, flashing lights and even ‘transporters’.
He is devastated by the news that his ex-wife Georgina wants to sell the flat in Hinckley, Leicestershire, where he has been living by himself since their break-up.
‘Trekkie’ Mr Alleyne said it would cost at least £100,000 rebuild the interior elsewhere, according to The Sun.
He said: ‘To say I’m gutted is an understatement. It is my life’s work — and it looks like it’s going into a skip. I admit there were tears.’
Mrs Alleyne, 52 — who has paid the mortgage since they split in 1994 — said: ‘I want to sell it as conventional property.’
Her former husband started building the amazingly accurate spaceship replica after his friend gave him a magazine based on the TV show.
He told the Daily Mail: ‘My friend gave me a Star Trek mag and I became obsessed with having my own space ship. He laughed when I told him – I think he thought it was all a joke, but I knew I was going to achieve it one day.
‘It all started as therapy after we split up,’ he said. ‘Building every bit from scratch really helped me to deal with the stress of it all.’
Step into my spaceship: The stunning level of detail he has put into transforming his home
Initially Mr Alleyne decked the flat out in cream and metallic colours as the USS Enterprise from 1979′s Star Trek: The Motion Picture. But he found that ‘a bit boring’ and has now upgraded by recreating the starship Voyager from the 1990s series of the same name.
A copy of the ship’s command console controls the lights and sound effects in the apartment in Hinckley, Leicestershire.
Every morning, a voice-activated computer system turns on fluorescent tubes that illuminate bleeping panels and a replica of the ‘beam me up’ transporter – all reflected in the mirrored ceiling. The windows have been fitted with layers of perspex and wood so that they appear to look out on outer space.
There’s a whole universe going on in that flat. Tony Alleyne’s home
Boldly going: Mr Alleyne said he was devastated at having to leave his homemade spaceship console behind
Even the doorbell has been customised. It plays a sample of Patrick Stewart in his role as captain Jean-Luc Picard.
Sourcing and building everything himself has cost Mr Alleyne around £4,000, but he said it would have cost hundreds of thousands of pounds for labourers to do it.
He said: ‘Building this has been like a dream. I had a vision and I’m really amazed at what I managed to achieve with just hard work.’
He added: ‘Some people might think I’m a bit of a sad individual, but I’m not. I’m just really into Star Trek – it’s my only vice.’
Remote retreat: The 58-year-old has spent ten years on the creation that he believes would costs hundreds of thousands to have built from scratch
News | Mail Online
